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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Murder Suspect Said Wife Duped Him From The Start Blackwell Testified At Annulment Hearing Days Before Shootings

Associated Press

The man accused of gunning down his mail-order wife and two other women in the King County Courthouse testified in a marriageannulment hearing just days earlier that she “was not quite the woman that she claimed.”

Timothy Blackwell, 47, testified he felt he had been duped by his 25-yearold wife, Susana Remerata Blackwell, almost from the day he arrived in the Philippines to meet her. He said she quickly became uninterested in him and asked him for more and more money.

“When she wanted things she was very, very nice,” he said, according to court transcripts. “Other times she would just ignore me.”

Blackwell also said: “In the times we were together, it was obvious to me that she was not quite the woman she - she was not quite the woman that she had claimed in her letters.”

That testimony came Monday in King County Superior Court. On Thursday morning, police say, Blackwell fatally shot his pregnant wife and two of her friends, Phoebe Dizon, 46, and Veronica Laureta, 42, in the courthouse 15 minutes before lawyers were to present final arguments over how the Blackwells’ marriage would be legally ended.

Blackwell is being held in the King County Jail without bail. Prosecutors say they expect to charge him early this week with three counts of aggravated first-degree murder, and possibly firstdegree manslaughter for the death of Susana Blackwell’s fetus.

A conviction on aggravated murder carries two possible sentences: life in prison or the death penalty.

A glimpse of the Blackwells’ troubled relationship emerged Friday as a judge released a file on the annulment case and partial transcripts of the trial, which ran from Monday through Wednesday.

Blackwell picked his wife out of a matchmaking magazine that advertised Asian women seeking partners. He wrote to two dozen women over several months in 1990 and 1991 before settling on Susana.

“I had heard so much that these women were very sincere, very loving, very caring, very faithful. And I always had admired Polynesian-type women, very long, straight black hair, very lightbrown skin. I always thought they were very beautiful women,” Blackwell testified Monday.

He left for the Philippines in March 1993 and the two were married on March 31, 1993.

“I really loved him,” Susana Blackwell testified Wednesday. “That’s why I agreed to marry him in the eyes of the people and in the eyes of God.”

Timothy Blackwell testified their relationship was rocky from the start with Susana seemingly uninterested in him and asking him for more and more money. His wife said he was abusive.

In court documents, Susana Blackwell’s lawyer, Mimi Castillo, wrote that Timothy Blackwell choked his wife on the first day of their honeymoon after they missed a ferry boat.

“It was then that Susana had serious doubts about the marriage and began to grow concerned about her safety,” Castillo wrote in a pretrial brief.

After the marriage, Timothy Blackwell left the Philippines for more than a month. His wife came to the United States in February 1994.

Less than two weeks later, they separated. The husband then filed for an annulment.